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98th out of 283 books
—
1,012 voters
The Dream Life of Sukhanov
by
Olga Grushin (Goodreads Author)
Olga Grushin's astonishing literary debut has won her comparisons with everyone from Gogol to Nabokov. A virtuoso study in betrayal and its consequences, it explores - really, colonizes - the consciousness of Anatoly Sukhanov, who many years before abandoned the precarious existence of an underground artist for the perks of a Soviet apparatchik. But, at the age of 56, his...more
Paperback, 368 pages
Published
January 30th 2007
by Penguin Books
(first published 2005)
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Feb 11, 2013
Manny
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
People who lie to themselves
Recommended to Manny by:
notgettingenough
Emanuel Lavrentievich closed the book and returned to his review. There was an odd sensation in his eyes and the back of his throat, and a number of thoughts, all of which he knew he would be well advised not to dwell on, were doing their best to gain his attention. He moved his gaze over the words he had already written, but they refused to cohere into sentences. And some of them surely had nothing to do with it? He deleted "Proust", "quintessentially" and "icon", pondered a while, and then put...more
A quarter way through and I want to give this more stars (added later: than the four I began with) - yes, plural - and I want to say it's the best Russian novel I've ever read...I'm throwing in Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, the lot.
Even better, it's a Russian novel written in English. What more could one ask for?
I only want to say all this, I will say it for sure when I've finished.
By the way, I'm gobsmacked that only one of my friends has read this.
-------------------------
Now for the informed opinion...more
Even better, it's a Russian novel written in English. What more could one ask for?
I only want to say all this, I will say it for sure when I've finished.
By the way, I'm gobsmacked that only one of my friends has read this.
-------------------------
Now for the informed opinion...more
Sep 05, 2012
John
added it
Sukhanov's wife, Nina, describing her husband's early, experimental paintings, when she first saw them, says: they are dark, very dark indeed, darker than expected but, also, strange and...beautiful." This is a pretty good summing up of the novel, too.
Simply put, hahaha, this is a dark, colourful novel, bleak, dripping wet, grey, heavy and light as snow flakes, bright, slow, annoying in parts, and rising to flights of fancy so beautiful, painful, and inspiring in its anguish and salvation that...more
Simply put, hahaha, this is a dark, colourful novel, bleak, dripping wet, grey, heavy and light as snow flakes, bright, slow, annoying in parts, and rising to flights of fancy so beautiful, painful, and inspiring in its anguish and salvation that...more
Wow! Best novel I've read in quite some time, and it's a first novel. Echoes of Tolstoy, Nabokov, and Bulgakov. English is Grushin's 3rd language, but you wouldn't know it. Story of a 55-year-old man in 1985 Soviet Russia, having a nervous breakdown as his work and family life fall apart and as Soviet Russia is on the brink of falling apart. As a young man, Sukhanov showed promise as a Russian surrealist in the tradition of Dali and Chagall, but in fear for his life and career, he suppresses his...more
Apr 24, 2012
Stacia
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
anyone & especially fans of art & surrealism
Shelves:
2012
At first, the long, flowery sentences overfilled with adjectives put me off the story a little bit. But for just a few pages... because, somehow, the story, the writing morphed and these became beautiful, startling descriptions. Melancholy. Surrealism. Art. Life. Youth. Aging.
Truly, this book is sublime. It's like a breathtaking painting put into words. Grushin has an incredible talent for merging the real with the unreal, a current life and a dream. You smoothly drift from reality to dream and...more
Truly, this book is sublime. It's like a breathtaking painting put into words. Grushin has an incredible talent for merging the real with the unreal, a current life and a dream. You smoothly drift from reality to dream and...more
Every now and then history elbows its way into a book I’m reading. The life of recently departed Vaclav Havel, at first glance, would seem to offer a stern rebuke to life of Grushin’s protag, “Tolya” Sukhanov (is it fair do compare historical figures with fictional characters? why else to we read novels, if not to see the grubby, muddled “truth” of “real” life in a new light?). Havel, an artist in his own right, chose not to “live within the lie,” as Solzhenitsyn put it; Tolya conforms to the li...more
This novel at its core is a story of man in his 50s having to confront the decisions that he made as a younger man and how they shaped the course of his life. Sukhanov essentially had two paths that he could have taken. On one path he pursues his passions but will inevitably struggle economically and will be outcasted to a certain extent. The other path requires him to give up, even forsake, that which he is most talented and passionate about, but in exchange he will live quite comfortably. Havi...more
Oct 18, 2007
Saxon
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
fans of russian fiction in general...
Shelves:
school,
newish-books
Second installment of "Novel on the Globe" course.
I really enjoyed this novel and would give it four and a half stars if the website so allowed me. Following in the tradition of most Russian novels, I feel like I could read this novel a few more times and still not entirely obtain all the symbolism and meaning behind it. There are certainly layers upon layers within this text.
The story revolves around the middle-aged character Sukhanov during glasnost period Moscow. At first, we learn that Sukh...more
I really enjoyed this novel and would give it four and a half stars if the website so allowed me. Following in the tradition of most Russian novels, I feel like I could read this novel a few more times and still not entirely obtain all the symbolism and meaning behind it. There are certainly layers upon layers within this text.
The story revolves around the middle-aged character Sukhanov during glasnost period Moscow. At first, we learn that Sukh...more
Can I just say: WOW. And not just because Grushin is a Russian lady writing in beautiful, crisp, evocative English, that's grand and all, but what an approach to a classic subject matter! She addresses the things we (aspiring writers, artists and such) think about constantly, mumble to ourselves and talk to others, passionately when drunk: what is talent? can it be confused with youth and energy? does an artist have a duty to fulfill himself, and at what expense to his family and friends? is to...more
Aug 29, 2006
Jacques Bromberg
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Fans of Nabokov, John Banville, and dreamy, meandering prose
Shelves:
prose-fiction
Olga Grushin's first novel delivered one wonderful surprise after another. I still can hardly believe that English wasn't her first language. "Dream Life" is the delicate story of the mental and social decline of Sukhanov, an influential Russian art historian during the waning years of the Soviet Union. Against this obscure and changing political background, a distant but constantly demanding family, and his foggy memories, he becomes aware that his life has been a series of choices he doesn't f...more
Lyrical, but strangely uncompelling, this is the story of a moral and mental breakdown. An artist of brilliant promise in his youth, Sukhanov sells out to the Soviet way, becoming an art critic/apparatchik promoting 'Russian' art as opposed to decadant Western art. In 1985 at age 56, the combination of mid-life and glasnost brings his past crashing down on him. As in European literature of the 20th century, politics shapes life in a way that is unknown in this country.
While I felt the author did a number of clever/interesting things in this novel, I think overall it tends to drag out its prose a bit more than it needs to and tends to make bold claims without fully justifying them. Of the things I found interesting, I thought Grushin's use of color references and transitions did an effective job of continually recalling the artist's outlook to the reader's attention while also highlighting the sometimes surreal nature of human experience (and by extension the...more
The Dream LIfe of Sukhanov by Olga Grushin raises the question of whether any book should be called a “first novel.” This fanciful, lyrical, and somewhat odd book is the work of an accomplished writer who surely had written many more pages than were finally included in The Dream Life of Sukhanov when it was published
Our hero, if we may call him that, is Anatoly Sukhanov, a Soviet bureaucrat of the arts who gave up painting for criticism and has become, at the novel’s beginning, editor of an impo...more
Our hero, if we may call him that, is Anatoly Sukhanov, a Soviet bureaucrat of the arts who gave up painting for criticism and has become, at the novel’s beginning, editor of an impo...more
I have this hankering to learn languages. Problem is, I’m not so good at it. It’s a little like Salieri in Amadeus, born with the desire and some ability to compose music, but unable to reach the moutaintops he can see so clearly and forced to watch an unworthy twit scramble up easily ahead of him. So I’m even more in awe of writers who not only author fine works of literature in English, but do so in English as their second or third language. Conrad and Nabakov are the only two that pop into m...more
earlier this year i read Grushin's The Line and i liked it so much that i went in search of this earlier novel. The Dream Life of Sukhanov has the best of the Russian novel about it. the uncertainties of a shifting reality wherein people gain and lose favour and the paranoia that state produces .... well, it makes great fodder for stories.
and damn this Olga Grushin is a good writer.
as the story progresses, Grushin switches between a first and third person narrative and flips through time like on...more
and damn this Olga Grushin is a good writer.
as the story progresses, Grushin switches between a first and third person narrative and flips through time like on...more
One of the best books I've read this year. Gripping, yet feels instantly like a classic, feels slightly like Bulgakov. Just simply loved it. Wish more people could write like this.
Below, the Moscow River moved its slow, dense, brown waters, and from their depths emerged a flimsy upside-down city that existed only at night, created by a thousand shimmering intertwinings of streetlights, headlights, floodlights. The walls, the churches, the bell towers of the underwater city trembled with a desire to break free, to float away with the current, to leave the oppressing, crowded, dangerous Moscow far, far behind; but the night held them firmly, and they stayed forever tethered...more
I found it a very frustrating read. I was more okay with it once I understood that it was a story of mental breakdown, but I had a hard time empathizing with or buying into the character of Sukhanov. It's such a passive and reactive character, I kept thinking of a pinball machine. I had much higher expectations of Grushin, especially having read an excerpt from her other book Exile, which I liked!
This is a tough one. On the one hand, it's brilliant. On the other, it's frustrating. But it is not frustratingly brilliant. The character is a bit too self-obsessed and the level of sophistication of the writing far exceeds the message of the book--that one makes choices throughout life that subtly and directly change one. This tale of an artist who went against his own artistic life in order to live more comfortably is age old. The twist is how the repressive, totalitarian regime he lived unde...more
A first novel: loaded with all the allusions and insinuations the phrase carries.
Let me compare this novel - because I want to - with another first novel by an American writer.
Which novel? 'Everything is Illuminated' by Jonathan Safran Foer.
The advantage Grushin has over Foer is age, and maturity.
Where 'The Dream of Sukhanov' scores over 'Everything is Illuminated' is in its sincerity to its subject, which on one level of abstraction is similar to Foer's novel: a third generation exploration of...more
Let me compare this novel - because I want to - with another first novel by an American writer.
Which novel? 'Everything is Illuminated' by Jonathan Safran Foer.
The advantage Grushin has over Foer is age, and maturity.
Where 'The Dream of Sukhanov' scores over 'Everything is Illuminated' is in its sincerity to its subject, which on one level of abstraction is similar to Foer's novel: a third generation exploration of...more
On the book club list. Just started it; always been fascinated by Stalinist culture, but have only read history; this looks like my first foray into the life inside the cultural elites...
And now, I have finished it. Very disappointed. What could have been an interesting story about the mid-life crisis of a Soviet cultural bureaucrat who'd traded his creative potential for a place of privilege ended up being an overheated melodrama. Or, it could have been abstracted a bit and been an engaging wor...more
And now, I have finished it. Very disappointed. What could have been an interesting story about the mid-life crisis of a Soviet cultural bureaucrat who'd traded his creative potential for a place of privilege ended up being an overheated melodrama. Or, it could have been abstracted a bit and been an engaging wor...more
3,5 estrelas
Esta é daquelas opiniões em que sinto alguma dificuldade em exprimir o que achei do livro. Tentarei fazê-lo da melhor maneira possível e peço desde já desculpa caso não o consiga fazer. Em caso de qualquer dúvida suscitada pela minha opinião, não hesite em perguntar.
Começando pela ideia base da história, foi algo que me agradou, até porque lhe confere uma certa faceta real. O herói não é perfeito, abriu mão de muitos dos seus sonhos e fez escolhas erradas. Ao longo do percurso, torno...more
Esta é daquelas opiniões em que sinto alguma dificuldade em exprimir o que achei do livro. Tentarei fazê-lo da melhor maneira possível e peço desde já desculpa caso não o consiga fazer. Em caso de qualquer dúvida suscitada pela minha opinião, não hesite em perguntar.
Começando pela ideia base da história, foi algo que me agradou, até porque lhe confere uma certa faceta real. O herói não é perfeito, abriu mão de muitos dos seus sonhos e fez escolhas erradas. Ao longo do percurso, torno...more
Anatoly Sukhanov is a Soviet apparatchik, editor of Moscow's Art of the World magazine and author of such Party-approved works as "Surrealism and other Western "Isms" as Manifestations of Capitalist Insolvency". As the novel begins, in a Soviet Union shortly after the ascension of Gorbachev, he is simply another soulless Soviet official ready to be mocked and condemned by another Russian novelist. As the novel unfolds, however, that is not what happens. As glasnost begins to thaw the political e...more
An amazing book. The main character used to be a surrealist artist in Russia. The author echoes this by writing it in a surrealist fashion. Looking back on reading this book makes me wish I was still reading it.
". . .Security/ is mortal's chiefest enemy", a line from MACBETH applies to this fine novel by Olga Grushin about a man who gives up his dreams of being an original artist to become a bureacratic functionary. Why does he do it? For the security of good pay, prestige, and a comfortable old age.
All of this carefully constructed life falls apart in Sukhanov's 50's when he meets an old artist friend who took a different route in life. The "falling apart" is managed by Grushin in a series of surrea...more
All of this carefully constructed life falls apart in Sukhanov's 50's when he meets an old artist friend who took a different route in life. The "falling apart" is managed by Grushin in a series of surrea...more
Oct 05, 2008
Shelley
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
those who love a creative read
Recommended to Shelley by:
npr summer reads
Wow! Another npr recommendation that was so beautifully written taking you places in the mind you may not have even known you had.
A profoundly engaging character-based novel about a Russian art critic's rise to fame and subsequent fall from grace. Spanning approximately fifty years of Anatoly Sukhanov's life, the story takes shape from the schizophrenic paroxysms of the character's daydreams and nightmares. On the surface a book about a middle-aged man losing his mind and therefore finding himself, Dream Life is also an allegory of Russian communism, and a formidable treatise on surrealism. This book succeeds on every leve...more
Others who have reviewed this gave such great descriptions (and discussions) that I can't even begin to try and come up with some new thoughts of my own right now (next time I'll write first and then read what others thought!).
I will say that, as someone who wasn't familiar with Russian novels, and Russian traditions I was a little confused by people's names changing all the time. I couldn't tell if it was the nature of the book (being quite surreal and ever-changing) or if it's a "Russian thin...more
I will say that, as someone who wasn't familiar with Russian novels, and Russian traditions I was a little confused by people's names changing all the time. I couldn't tell if it was the nature of the book (being quite surreal and ever-changing) or if it's a "Russian thin...more
Olga Grushin’s novel tells the story of Sukhanov, a once principled, idealistic and talented young painter who sold more than just his artistic soul for a comfortable life in Soviet Russia. As the story progresses, Sukhanov – slowly losing his mind – finds it hard to distinguish between the present and the past, until finally realizing what he sacrificed in his youth. This book is so beautifully written you find yourself reading over particular sentences time and again. One of the best things I’...more
Normally I avoid most contemporary literature, especially written by female authors who can turn a phrase, but fail to deliver much more than that. Pretty writing and clever phrasing with flat characters and a contrived experience do absolutely nothing for me. Thankfully, this book is different.
I'll admit that a few florid descriptions at the start made me want to quit ("Streetlamps swam through the liquid mist, their pale reflections drowning in an inverted world of running asphalt"). But I am...more
I'll admit that a few florid descriptions at the start made me want to quit ("Streetlamps swam through the liquid mist, their pale reflections drowning in an inverted world of running asphalt"). But I am...more
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Olga Grushin is the author of The Dream Life of Sukhanov (2006) and The Line (to be published April 2010), as well as short stories, literary criticism, essays, and other works. She has been awarded the 2007 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and named one of the Best Young American Novelists by Granta magazine; her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New York Times, Granta,...more
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“In anyone's life there can be only a few such moments - moments when a long, ringing hush fills your hearing, the world stands still as if under a magic spell, and thoughts and feelings course freely through your being, traversing the whole of eternity in the duration of a minute, so that when time resumes and you return from whatever nameless, dazzling void you briefly inhabited, you find yourself changed, changed irrevocably, and from then on, whether you want it or not, your life flows in a different direction. This was such a moment for me.”
—
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